“Put it into the couch, not your marriage.” ‘The Racket’ is loud, angry, and fucking hilarious. It begins with Richie taking his anger out not on his and Devon’s relationship but, at his glacially calm therapist’s suggestion, on the couch. With a tennis racket. His subsequent golden-boy claim that he’s worked out his shit is […]
“We’ll know how cool we look.” I think the Monarch just murdered Andy Warhol. Or Wes Warhammer, anyway. Who may or may not have been Andy Warhol. ‘It Happening One Night’ sadly repairs the hole in the floor of Venture Tower, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the season’s best entries so […]
Stars: Michael Socha, Jim Howick, Michaela Coel, Daniel Eghan, Roy Thorn, Holli Dempsey, Trystan Gravelle, Michael Smiley, Ashley Walters | Written by Fintan Ryan | Directed by Lawrence Gough, Jonathan van Tulleken E4 returns to top-form with a scintillating new comedy that sees writers repeat the success of Misfits… The Aliens is certainly not your […]
“Feels like something’s up.” Using your hour of airtime to tell parallel stories with no point of intersection is a risky proposition. Jimmy and Mike may both feel the pull of older, easier ways of moving and surviving in the world, and they’re both muddling through half-assed attempts at turning over a new leaf, but that’s […]
Here’s the full 30-second official trailer – entitled “monster” – for the highly anticipated second season of Fear the Walking Dead which premieres on 11th April 2016 on AMC, exclusive to BT. Living in the same universe as The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead is a gritty drama that explores the onset of the […]
“You know that’s actually Devon in the portrait?” Looking in the mirror and realizing you don’t know who’s looking back, and that no one else knows either, sucks. ‘Whispered Secrets’ ends with Richie staring at a hole in the world where his wife’s portrait used to be, its pale spot on a wall a blocky […]
“I know who my enemy is.” That hole in the lobby of Venture Tower is really racking up a body count. Assuming Battle-Ax and Think Tank (voiced by the incomparable Jeffrey Wright of Boardwalk Empire fame) both bought it in that crash, that’s three shots, three kills for Chekov’s unusually enormous gun. It’s an accretion leading directly […]
When you think about the Tables, Ladders and Chairs matches of the past, they have been about human wreckage and high spots. When the name was taken for the PPV event it lessened the appeal somewhat. Is WWE: TLC – Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2015 something different though? Surprisingly yes it is. Starting with the […]
“Are you still morally flexible?” ‘Cobbler’ follows a simple thread, observing the lives of the brothers McGill as they proceed absent one from the other. For Jimmy it means an end to the moral code he tried to follow to win Chuck’s favor, something he now knows he could never obtain. He’ll keep being a lawyer, […]
“You don’t want to believe.” A chunky, inelegant piece of opening exposition plays us in and serves to highlight the fact that there was virtually nothing between season 10’s finale and premiere that was of any consequence to either. Excusable, maybe, in a procedural content to hum along indefinitely, but grueling in an episode of television […]
“Reach up my ass and grab my heart.” The cast of The Venture Bros is engaged in a constant struggle to determine who and what they are. This myopic personal rat race consumes their lives, even though they almost never manage to actually change or learn anything, and the slapdash enthusiasm with which characters like the Monarch […]
“Who you are ain’t gettin’ signed.” Richie wants to believe that, like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, his skills amount to more than a good ear and a practiced mind. His return to the arms of addiction has him convinced that what he heard when the New York Dolls brought that building down was a […]
“You’re all hearing this the same way?” It’s 1973, and the streets of New York are swamped with the morning upchuck of a hungover sexual awakening. Vinyl, brainchild of Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, Terence Winter, and Rich Cohen, climbs deep into the world of record production in the skin-submersible of one Richard “Richie” Finestra, protagonist and (briefly) narrator. […]
“SG WAS HERE” It starts and ends with the same conundrum. When the rules say no to us, whether it’s an alarmed security door barring our escape or a seemingly purposeless warning label on an otherwise normal light switch, what do we do, and why? How do we maintain our identities in a world trying […]
“Thank you for being my people.” Gravity Falls, after two seasons of the best-looking backgrounds, liveliest characters, and all-out most infuriating production schedules of all time, is off the air. It isn’t a perfect finale, nor is it a particularly daring one, but it has heart, horror, and an end-of-summer bittersweetness that gives its many indulgences […]
“I am getting a taste of what Agent Scully must suffer.” Boy, this season is one wild ride. Ups and downs have abounded and here on the precipice of its foreshortened run there’s still no clear thrust as to where it’s all heading and why any of it was dragged up from cold storage for […]
“Yeah, Mighty Monarch. My wife invited me.” Nothing in The Venture Bros is merely exceptional. If there’s one thing the show does consistently, it’s portraying a world where even the most astonishing lives are riddled with fear, insecurity, fuckups, and tedium. ‘Faking Miracles’ is a quiet case study in how the glossy exterior is maintained through hack-work, […]
The second spin-off from NCIS (and technically the third from JAG – which is where the original NCIS series was spun out of), NCIS New Orleans is a very different beast to its predecessors. Whereas the first show was a stoic, patriotic series; and the second was more action and comedy orientated; this third entry […]
“YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE” ‘Home Again’ is a parable about how we deal with our garbage. It births this metaphor via a gooey canal, giving us a garbage golem who kills to protect the homeless, or at least to punish those who oppress them, and a bluntly mirrored plot centered on Scully’s struggle to accept her […]
“Where am I? Hell? Or a children’s TV show set in Hell?” There’s a blurry line between the everyday and the exceptional. Plenty of superhero flicks have made fodder out of the murkiness of that division. Think back to Mr. Incredible’s super-powered midlife crisis, his inability to reconcile his power and ability with what he […]
“It’s a reminder that no matter how overwhelming our anxieties might be, they will soon be resolved when we are dead and buried for all eternity.” Thus does the preposterously Teutonic psychiatrist prescribe a walk in the graveyard as a cure for life’s angst. Even life’s most terrifying and mysterious questions, he asserts, have answers. […]
“It’s a Sicilian thing.” It feels like the Earth was young the last time The Venture Bros was on the air, but here we are again at the start of a brand new season. Season 5 ended in flames, death, and an accordion-driven rendition of The Crash Test Dummies’ ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ along with the […]
